The status of instrumental music within the hierarchy of artistic forms shifted in the early 19th century when the Romantic philosophers stormed in with newfangled ideas about music’s preeminence among the arts. It was Beethoven’s Eroica that gave us the origin story for symphonies being interpreted as a vision of heroic struggle and triumph, of human self-realisation in the face of adversity. (It is also true that symphonic music’s collective idealism has proved politically unscrupulous, and many pieces bear the memory of their use as a soundtrack within totalitarian regimes.) Not for nothing has the musical form long been linked to the idea of democracy – boots on a march, voices in a protest – with 19th-century thinkers arguing that all the instruments playing their parts to make a whole modelled the harmonious functioning of society. And it is when symphonies succeed in tapping into a vision of our collective ideals – the society we would like to live in, the people we’d most like to be – that they really shine. Big and important meanings with philosophical grandeur, about self and society. It has a tricksy ability to tread a line between repelling meaning – ie it’s pure music, not about anything except music – and attracting meaning like iron filings to a magnet. Much of the reason the symphony has maintained such heft since then is because it supposedly represents timeless values. (Side note: typically people don’t clap between movements, but life is far too short for it to matter if you do.) Beethoven’s Eroica gave us the origin story for symphonies being interpreted as a vision of heroic struggle and triumph Ensembles got meatier, adding wind and brass, and so did the symphony’s musical ambitions, focusing on the evolution of one kernel-like theme over – usually – four complementary sections, called movements, each with a different musical character. But it was when composers in Vienna got involved – first Haydn, then Mozart and Beethoven – that things really began to take off. Composers around Milan in the early to mid-18th century developed the instrumental overtures that preceded the onstage action, often known as sinfonia, into a stand-alone form.
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